Any academic department should place a high value on excellence. Regardless of the area or nature of the department, the age of the faculty, availability of funds, or particular administrator, excellence should be the paramount pursuit of all faculty. It is necessary to distinguish between individual and departmental excellence. Both are important. However, departmental excellence is more than merely the aggregation of program excellence of individual faculty. There is a considerable difference between "a community of scholars" and a "collection of individual scholars."
